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2 GLR 1 (1998)

handle is hein.journals/gmglwr2 and id is 1 raw text is: GAMING LAW REVIEW Volume 2, Number 1, 1998 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Editorial A Word from the House T HE NAVAJO TRIBE has a rich oral history, and one ancient tale that is often retold is that of The Gambler, the first-born child of the Spirit of the Sun. The story begins when the Spirit of the Sun- a gambler himself-wanted a large piece of turquoise held by the Pueblo Tribe in what are now the Chaco Canyon ruins in northern New Mexico. He sent The Gambler to Earth to gam- ble for the valuable icon, and The Gambler was impossible to beat. He soon won the rain and the snow, the plants and the flowers, and ulti- mately, the turquoise, itself. Rather than simply hand over the turquoise to the Spirit of the Sun, however, The Gambler dared his father to win it back. So the Spirit of the Sun had a second male child, whom he taught to gamble. The second child of the Spirit of the Sun be- gan winning everything from The Gambler, stripping him of all his possessions. Finally, The Gambler wagered the one thing he had left-his life-and lost. Rather than kill his brother, however, the victor shot him back into the sky with a giant bow. In modern times, The Gambler would be la- beled a compulsive gambler, and many would point to him as a reason to ban all gam- bling. Certainly, compulsive gambling, no mat- ter how small the percentage, is a serious prob- lem, and a blight on the gaming industry as a whole. Yet gambling, when part of a carefully-con- structed community plan, and when operated in conformance with well-reasoned law, has worked small miracles. Many parts of the coun- try have been transformed by the influx of money generated by casino gambling, money that pours into the infrastructure-schools, hospitals, and so forth. It would be difficult for anyone with any in- sight into modern gaming to claim plausibly that the compulsive gambler is a fiction, or that compulsive gambling does not wreak havoc in individual instances. But just as the Navjo In- dians have recognized from time immemorial the delicate balance present in nature, so we, too, must strive to strike a proper balance and not to destroy the vibrant, vital, and vivacious gaming industry simply to avoid a single so- cial drawback. To overreact in such a manner would be truly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and can only lead to greater prob- lems as the strong human impulse to risk is dri- ven underground, there to be controlled by sometimes sinister forces which remain diffi- cult, if not impossible, to monitor. Interestingly, the name of the mythical char- acter I have termed The Gambler is actually Ni'hwiil Biihi, meaning the one who wins the people. The Navajo tale reveals that the self-destructive nature of Ni'hwiil Biihi's ob- sessive gambling could only be controlled by his father, the Spirit of the Sun. So, too, can the plight of today's compulsive gambler be less- ened and alleviated only be keeping gaming out in the sun-visible, monitorable and in- herently regulatable. Dawn R. LaRochelle Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy New York 1

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